Press Release – Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment
Online job vacancies decreased further in December following a fall in November, according to the latest Jobs Online report from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Skilled vacancies decreased by 5.6 per cent in December and all online job vacancies decreased by 6.3 per cent compared to November. The biggest fall in skilled vacancies was in Wellington, where the drop was 11.4 per cent.

“While there is some variation from month to month in the seasonally adjusted series, the trend in skilled vacancies has been slowly falling since August 2012,” says the Ministry’s Acting Manager of Labour Market and Business Performance, David Paterson.

In December, the biggest fall in skilled vacancies was in information technology (down by 15.5 per cent). Despite the fall in vacancies for most industries, the vacancies in hospitality and tourism grew by 5.7 per cent.

Skilled job vacancies continued to fall in the country’s main centres in December, with the biggest fall in Wellington, followed by Canterbury (down by 10.9 per cent) and Auckland (down by 5.4 per cent).

Over the year to December, skilled vacancies decreased by 1.5 per cent, however all vacancies increased by 0.6 per cent.

Over the year, vacancies in Canterbury grew by 4.4 per cent. This was driven by growing demand for skilled workers in the construction and engineering (up by 57.9 per cent) and sales, retail, marketing and advertising (up by 20.2 per cent) industries.